Provenance

The large piece of fine Carrara marble was reserved by the Emperor Napoleon in 1812 in Italy en route to the Russian front. He commissioned a monumental classical vase to commemorate his anticipated triumphs in Russia. The finished article was intended to be the centrepiece of the palace he was planning for his infant son, the King of Rome, in the Paris area of Chaillot as part of an 'imperial city';  the designers Fontain and Piercier considered it would be 'the vastest and and most extraordinary work of our century'. Neither the anticipated triumphs in eastern Europe nor the 'imperial city' materialised;  the plans for 'a Kremlin a hundred times more beautiful than Moscow's' were abandoned after the Emperor's first abdication in 1814.

In 1815 the Grand Duke of Tuscany offered the marble to The Prince Regent.  The ambassador to Florence, Lord Burghersh, negotiated the Prince's acceptance of the gift and Sir Richard Westmacott was commissioned to carve a new version of the vase. Sir Richard is known to have received £4,500 in 1819, possibly an advance payment; in 1827 he submitted a bill for £240 9s. for machinery to turn the vase; he was paid in May 1831 by the late King's executors.

The finished vase was too heavy to install in its intended location in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle.  In 1835 William IV presented it to the National Gallery (then under construction in Trafalgar Square). Thereafter it moved a number of times: first to Gloucester Gate in Hyde Park, into store at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum) and, finally, in 1903 Edward VII accepted it for installation in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.

The vase features in one of the most iconic photographs taken of of Queen Elizabeth taken in 1939 by Cecil Beaton (RCIN 2315149).